Burlington teen enjoys times she had with great-grandmothers

Michaela Davis, 14, shares a happy moment with her great-grandmothers, Shirley Crabtree, left, and Essie Reinhardt, at Crabtree’s 100th birthday party last month. It was the first meeting for the two great-grandmothers. Crabtree passed away March 3. Reinhardt is 101.

Photo submitted

By Molly McGowan / Times-News

Published: Sunday, March 9, 2014 at 03:08 AM.

Michaela Davis, 14, had the unique experience last month of celebrating her paternal great-grandmother’s 100th birthday in Roxboro before she passed away March 3, and next week Michaela will be attending her maternal great-grandmother’s 102nd birthday party.
Michaela, of Burlington, understands that not everyone has had the chance to meet their great-grandparents, and that being able to visit both great-grandmothers for several years is extremely special.
But it also was life as usual for the teenager, who’d never known anything different.
“It’s normal,” Michaela said.
A freshman at Southern High School, Michaela said, “In my second period class, they have a ‘Good News’ section,” and she recently shared about her great-grandmother Shirley Crabtree’s 100th birthday, and her great-grandmother Essie Reinhardt’s upcoming 102nd birthday on March 16.
“I feel like it’s crazy for them,” Michaela said, referring to the other students in her class. “I feel like I take it for granted, because it’s all I’ve known.”
Michaela said when she visits Essie at the Homeplace of Burlington, her maternal great-grandmother usually wants to catch up on current events and wants to talk about what Michaela has been up to recently.
“Lately it’s just been school and soccer, because that takes lots of time,” she said.
When Michaela used to visit her paternal great-grandmother at an assisted living facility in Roxboro, it was all about games.
“With Grandma Crabtree, we used to play ‘Crazy 8’s,’ ” Michaela said. “She hated ‘Go Fish,’ which is one of my favorites.”
After a while, Michaela had figured out Shirley’s secret.
“Every time she had an eight, she’d scratch her head with the card,” Michaela said, laughing.
She and Shirley also spent their visits watching Duke basketball games, and the centenarian tended to get vocal. A Bushy Fork girls basketball coach for 20 seasons in Person County, Shirley had brought home 17 first-place trophies, said Mike Davis, her grandson and Michaela’s father.
“She still critiqued Duke on the television,” Michaela said. “The language (came) out sometimes,” Mike added.
Both Mike and his wife, Tonya Davis, came from big families and remember regularly visiting their grandmothers — much like Michaela regularly visited her great-grandmothers.
Mike recalled that as a child, his family would visit both sets of grandparents on a weekly basis.
“We would go every Sunday,” he said. “We would make the trek … to visit one family at lunch and one at supper.”
In addition to being a girls’ basketball coach, Mike said his Grandma Crabtree strung tobacco and cooked for all the farm workers.
“She’d always say, ‘A man’s work is sun to sun, a woman’s work is never done,’ ” Mike recalled. “She reminded us of that at least once a week.”

Like Shirley, Essie was a hard worker, both in the fields and the factory.
Essie grew up on a farm in Newton and planted cotton, corn, peanuts and potatoes. She also worked 45 hours a week at a white glove manufacturing factory, earning $4.25 a week for 40 years.
“She told me I needed to get an education because I’d never make it there,” Brenda Hill, Essie’s daughter and mother to Tonya, said.
Though the two centenarians shared the same extended family and grew up in the same time period, Essie and Shirley had never met before Shirley’s 100th birthday party on February 5.
“That was the first time I’d seen her,” Essie said. “She looked good.”
“For my grandma and Mike’s grandmother to meet was very emotional for me,” Tonya said.
And since Shirley’s recent passing, the photos and memories from the day are even more special to the family.
In a room with four generations of women sitting together, it’s interesting to see and hear what’s been passed down, picked up and inherited — and what’s supposedly skipped a generation.
Brenda said both her mother’s cooking and sewing skills skipped her and were passed onto her own daughter, Tonya.
Tonya’s husband, Mike, argues that only the sewing skills stuck with his wife and that he’s the cook in the family.
Michaela doesn’t talk about cooking or sewing, but when she does talk she punctuates her sentences with the same hand motions her great-grandmother Reinhardt uses. And she’s athletic, like her great-grandmother Crabtree was — though Michaela said she never pushed her to play basketball.
And both Mike and Tonya can see other aspects of their grandmothers in their daughter.
Mike said Michaela’s learned a lot about hard work from both her great-grandmothers and said, “I think that’s why she’s so independent.”
Tonya said that unlike many children who are uncomfortable with or don’t know how to converse with seniors, Michaela seems at home talking to her elders.
“I think they have allowed her to communicate with older people better,” Tonya said.
Added Michaela: “I’ve just learned to work hard because they did so much.”

Living a century

• According to the 2010 Census, 53,364 people in the United States were age 100 or older
• There are more centenarian women; for every 100 centenarian women, there were only 20.7 centenarian men in 2010.
• In the period from 1980 to 2010, the centenarian population had a larger percentage increase than the total population; the centenarian population increased by 65.8 percent, while the total population increased by 36.3 percent
• Centenarian women were slightly more likely to live in a nursing home, while centenarian men were more likely to live with others in a household than any other form of living arrangement
• In 2010, 85.7 percent of centenarians lived in an urban area
• Most centenarians, or 17,444 individuals, lived in the South, but the state with the largest population of centenarians was California at 5,921.

Source: Information gathered from the 2010 Census and “Centenarians: 2010,” a 2010 Census Special Report.

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Michaela Davis, 14, had the unique experience last month of celebrating her paternal great-grandmother’s 100th birthday in Roxboro before she passed away March 3, and next week Michaela will be attending her maternal great-grandmother’s 102nd birthday party.
Michaela, of Burlington, understands that not everyone has had the chance to meet their great-grandparents, and that being able to visit both great-grandmothers for several years is extremely special.
But it also was life as usual for the teenager, who’d never known anything different.
“It’s normal,” Michaela said.
A freshman at Southern High School, Michaela said, “In my second period class, they have a ‘Good News’ section,” and she recently shared about her great-grandmother Shirley Crabtree’s 100th birthday, and her great-grandmother Essie Reinhardt’s upcoming 102nd birthday on March 16.
“I feel like it’s crazy for them,” Michaela said, referring to the other students in her class. “I feel like I take it for granted, because it’s all I’ve known.”
Michaela said when she visits Essie at the Homeplace of Burlington, her maternal great-grandmother usually wants to catch up on current events and wants to talk about what Michaela has been up to recently.
“Lately it’s just been school and soccer, because that takes lots of time,” she said.
When Michaela used to visit her paternal great-grandmother at an assisted living facility in Roxboro, it was all about games.
“With Grandma Crabtree, we used to play ‘Crazy 8’s,’ ” Michaela said. “She hated ‘Go Fish,’ which is one of my favorites.”
After a while, Michaela had figured out Shirley’s secret.
“Every time she had an eight, she’d scratch her head with the card,” Michaela said, laughing.
She and Shirley also spent their visits watching Duke basketball games, and the centenarian tended to get vocal. A Bushy Fork girls basketball coach for 20 seasons in Person County, Shirley had brought home 17 first-place trophies, said Mike Davis, her grandson and Michaela’s father.
“She still critiqued Duke on the television,” Michaela said. “The language (came) out sometimes,” Mike added.
Both Mike and his wife, Tonya Davis, came from big families and remember regularly visiting their grandmothers — much like Michaela regularly visited her great-grandmothers.
Mike recalled that as a child, his family would visit both sets of grandparents on a weekly basis.
“We would go every Sunday,” he said. “We would make the trek … to visit one family at lunch and one at supper.”
In addition to being a girls’ basketball coach, Mike said his Grandma Crabtree strung tobacco and cooked for all the farm workers.
“She’d always say, ‘A man’s work is sun to sun, a woman’s work is never done,’ ” Mike recalled. “She reminded us of that at least once a week.”

Like Shirley, Essie was a hard worker, both in the fields and the factory.
Essie grew up on a farm in Newton and planted cotton, corn, peanuts and potatoes. She also worked 45 hours a week at a white glove manufacturing factory, earning $4.25 a week for 40 years.
“She told me I needed to get an education because I’d never make it there,” Brenda Hill, Essie’s daughter and mother to Tonya, said.
Though the two centenarians shared the same extended family and grew up in the same time period, Essie and Shirley had never met before Shirley’s 100th birthday party on February 5.
“That was the first time I’d seen her,” Essie said. “She looked good.”
“For my grandma and Mike’s grandmother to meet was very emotional for me,” Tonya said.
And since Shirley’s recent passing, the photos and memories from the day are even more special to the family.
In a room with four generations of women sitting together, it’s interesting to see and hear what’s been passed down, picked up and inherited — and what’s supposedly skipped a generation.
Brenda said both her mother’s cooking and sewing skills skipped her and were passed onto her own daughter, Tonya.
Tonya’s husband, Mike, argues that only the sewing skills stuck with his wife and that he’s the cook in the family.
Michaela doesn’t talk about cooking or sewing, but when she does talk she punctuates her sentences with the same hand motions her great-grandmother Reinhardt uses. And she’s athletic, like her great-grandmother Crabtree was — though Michaela said she never pushed her to play basketball.
And both Mike and Tonya can see other aspects of their grandmothers in their daughter.
Mike said Michaela’s learned a lot about hard work from both her great-grandmothers and said, “I think that’s why she’s so independent.”
Tonya said that unlike many children who are uncomfortable with or don’t know how to converse with seniors, Michaela seems at home talking to her elders.
“I think they have allowed her to communicate with older people better,” Tonya said.
Added Michaela: “I’ve just learned to work hard because they did so much.”

Living a century

• According to the 2010 Census, 53,364 people in the United States were age 100 or older
• There are more centenarian women; for every 100 centenarian women, there were only 20.7 centenarian men in 2010.
• In the period from 1980 to 2010, the centenarian population had a larger percentage increase than the total population; the centenarian population increased by 65.8 percent, while the total population increased by 36.3 percent
• Centenarian women were slightly more likely to live in a nursing home, while centenarian men were more likely to live with others in a household than any other form of living arrangement
• In 2010, 85.7 percent of centenarians lived in an urban area
• Most centenarians, or 17,444 individuals, lived in the South, but the state with the largest population of centenarians was California at 5,921.

Source: Information gathered from the 2010 Census and “Centenarians: 2010,” a 2010 Census Special Report.